My secret to looking young at 50+

For years Tracey McGown knew about the nutritive, natural skin care brand that would eventually transform her skin. She just didn't consider using it.

When she finally did, this is what happened.

Walking past mourners at a high profile media funeral, Tracey McGown allowed herself an occasional smile as people she hadn’t seen for years exclaimed how young she looked.

"Later at the wake, so many of the TV people I used to work with (clearly Twilight fans) told me that I had to be a vampire! The reason was, they said, I hadn't aged since they knew me in my 20s'.

"I have to admit I started to feel pretty good,” said Tracey, “especially as I was turning 50 a few days later”.

Tracey's youthful skin 'secret'

“My former TV colleagues all wanted to know what my secret was to looking so good.

I told them that my 'youthful skin secret' was the skin care I'd used for the past two years, the Brisbane based natural skin care brand Simplicité Skin Care.

My skin blossomed after I started using it. 

I just wish I had done that years earlier!"

Misled into thinking expensive beauty products work better

In her earlier working life Tracey was a newspaper beauty editor, later a TV presenter and reporter. She’d always been a fan of beauty products, her friends loved to say she had more lotions and potions than a cosmetic department.

Tracey admits she was attracted to big beauty brands because they had the biggest claims – and the biggest price tags.

 “I was convinced that a product had to be expensive to be any good.”

“I wasn’t paid very well and it killed me to pay $250, for example, for a jar of SK-II. But I thought that’s what I had to do to get great skin.”

“During that time I came to know the former Queensland TV newsreader Robin Parkin-Lyons, who always had fabulous skin and looked half her age. I knew that she’d left TV to found a skin care company, Simplicité, with her husband David, a naturopath and herbalist. In fact I came to know David quite well, not only seeing him as a patient but also using him as an ‘expert’ in many stories I reported on for Channel Nine and then later for Channel Seven's Today Tonight where I was also a producer.”

How could locally made skin care compare with big brands

“I was very aware of the Simplicité products but I remember shrugging my shoulders at the thought of using them. My prejudice was that they were locally made and cost much less than what I was used to paying. So how could they be as good as products developed by the likes of Lancôme and SKII?”

After she left television, Tracey continued to turn to David Lyons for naturopathic advice but her heels were firmly dug in when it came to skin care. “It was only when I desperately needed something to help my 4-year-old red-haired son with sensitive skin, who had suffered wind burn on a ski trip to Japan, that I did finally get one of David’s creams,” she said.

“I still didn’t try Simplicité myself however, even though the product helped my son.

"After all, I thought, there were plenty of other brands out there; what was so different about Simplicité?"

At last my skin is hydrated with a lovely glow

Tracey, then 48, with her family on their 2012 ski trip

"Then, two years ago (2012), Robin gave me a Simplicité Trial Pack to take on a skiing trip. I think she felt sorry for me because I kept complaining about how dry my skin felt - just as I was heading off into six weeks of freezing weather!"

"My skin has never looked back since that time. I emailed Robin after a couple of weeks on the ski trip because the products felt so amazing and my skin felt SO much better – hydrated at last with a lovely glow.

I told her that I was ashamed that I’d never tried these products before, despite them being right under my nose so to speak."

Not a vampire, just 'beautiful ageing'

“I'm impressed that Simplicité products address both my oiliness and dryness without causing congestion. Plus, I’m thrilled to say that I look so fresh and young – who wouldn’t be?"

“A colleague I saw just recently said, 'Are you sure you're not from Twilight? You just don’t seem to age.'

I did like that. Of course I'm ageing – but it's beautiful ageing, thanks to Simplicité."

Tracey McGown owns and operates McGown Creative with her husband Darren.
She uses the Simplicité Basic Six and Intensive products.

Tracey in 2014